Forty + (Almost) Free Food!

Hi there friends! So today is Saturday, its 9:30pm in Arizona time (we're 3 hours earlier than EST) and this is not a birth announcement. :) Anjuli's due date came and went uneventfully, at my 40 week appointment on Wednesday they were pleased that everything is looking good and she is continuing to be her active self, but wanted to begin non-stress tests twice a week to monitor her activity, schedule my next appointment for Monday, and then begin talk of an induction.

One of those dreadful self portraits...but Lou had a full class schedule on my due date. :) 40 weeks

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 I was disappointed to find that I haven't dilated or effaced more (1cm and 50%) since my 38 week exam but she is considerably lower so progress is being made. I went in to our little hospital on Thursday for the non stress test which consists of being hooked up to two monitors for an hour-one that measures Baby A's heartrate and the other that shows both movement and contractions. I had spent most of the morning in bed after getting very little sleep, so my contractions were few and far between. Anjuli is amazingly active, and her heartrate stays around 140 when she's chilling but as she moves it elevates to the 180s...which like I said, is a lot! No wonder I feel drained at times of all energy! There's plenty of amniotic fluid around her and she's still a girl, according to the ultrasound. :) Just has to finish her cooking time.....
I have been fluctuating between, "I must rest up for labor" and "I must get this baby born" for the past few weeks...so some days I have amazing amounts of energy and others its a struggle to get the basic daily tasks done. Last night I had some very restful sleep- I discovered if I play my "Fernando Ortega" Pandora station on my phone and place it next to my belly, Anjuli jumps up and down on my bladder for the first 10 minutes but after that it seems to put her to sleep. Amazingly wonderful discovery after quite a few restless nights! (She lives off her own special version of in-utero '8 Hour Energy' starting at 11pm, I've decided. :)) So, I have done that for the last two nights and gotten at least 5 hours of sleep. This morning I was energized and rested enough to head out to the "Market on the Move" here on post. It was the first time it has been organized here in the area and I was curious to see the results, as they said that they had over 36,000 lbs of produce donated. :) They advertised "60 lbs of produce for $10", so my two (also very 8+ months' pregnant) friends/neighbors Lindsay and Sarah joined me in my Saturday morning quest. :) There were hundreds of folks standing in line when we arrived to the site and we ended up waiting for a little over an hour but we spent that time chatting about: Bar vs Bat Mitzvahs, chick flicks, pregnancy massages, Walmart bikes, Alaskan geography....etc etc etc and the time went by fairly quickly. :) At the front of the line, we were handed a poker chip token to cash in-showing that we were paying customers, two large fruit boxes and directed to one of five different table lines. The produce available was vegetables only but they had an ample selection of cucumbers, peppers, summer squash, zucchini, tomatoes and I ended up bringing home these two boxes full to process.

 In the meantime I had some of those breathtaking contractions start. Whew....they do take your breath away! This is it....I hoped! So, I got home with my loot and began processing, determined to stay on my feet and keep them going, but also get all my vegetables blanched and frozen for meals later on....just so they wouldn't rot as I lay in the hospital.

Peeling tomatoes after blanching for freezing-assembly line!

Finished! Whew....plenty of good stuff for Lou's future dinners. :)

The contractions lasted for the next 2 1/2 hours and then abruptly stopped...which by that time I was grateful for. So much for that! That left me with only one option-NAP. And I took advantage of it. :) Meanwhile, in North Carolina my sister in law Christie was laboring and had her baby, a little boy named Thomas James! (Tommy for short). He has a full head of hair and is 7 lbs, 11oz at 37 weeks!

Tommy with daddy Jim, look at that beautiful hair!

I'm wondering how much bigger Anjuli will get in these remaining days....as I have started craving carbs like nothing I experienced earlier in the year! My sweet friend Mikki sabotaged all good nutritionally healthy eating intentions with this stash of Wawa goodies that arrived in a care package yesterday from Kentucky!

How can I resist all this Tastykake goodness at my fingertips! Hopefully I haven't added an extra lb to Anjuli's weight with my lack of self control, lol.

 I finished this little sign to hang over her crib and although we still need to put it up....I'll be more than glad to postpone that task for a ride to the hospital instead. :) Lou keeps saying,"Just let me know when your water breaks, ok?" And I will, I assure him!
Hope you all have a restful weekend and beautiful Sunday of worship! We haven't been able to get out to church for some time but we are enjoying listening to Redeemer Church Blacksburg's online sermons each Sunday, what a blessing modern technology can be when utilized wisely. :) Hope to be updating this again soon with lots of pictures of sweet baby redness!